Hybrid spaces for science learning: New demands and opportunities for research

"Hybrid spaces for science learning" refers to the merging of real and virtual worlds to produce new environments and visualizations where physical and digital objects co-exist and interact in real time. Learning science within hybrid spaces can be a fun, engaging, and reflective experience. Further, hybrid spaces are inherently social, facilitating dialogue and social exchange, as well as the construction of knowledge, paralleling the nature of contemporary science. This symposium brings together several research programs that address learning "across contexts" that span classroom activities, museum visits, and engaging, embodied experience of science phenomena. We include an international set of presenters from Canada, USA and Norway, each engaged in design and empirical investigations of designs that blends conceptual knowledge with the development of inquiry skills and epistemological knowledge. Each paper presents the research context, method of design and evaluation, research progress, and science learning outcomes.